Saturday, January 22, 2011

CONGRESSMAN KUCINICH: REVOLUTIONIZING MONEY

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is proposing to return control of our money system to government, as provided for in the Constitution. This would revolutionize the American monetary system for a second time, the first being when the Constitution was written at the end of the Revolutionary War.

In the political atmosphere of 2011, Representative Kucinich, Democrat, is viewed by some conservatives as a communist.Conversely liberals and progressives generally see him as a courageous advocate for what is desperately needed—returning control of our money to democratically elected lawmakers.And there are, ironically enough, sophisticated conservatives who see his proposed bill as benefitting the private sector by making investment money available to a much wider range of enterprises, which in turn would increase prosperity and spread it broadly.

He introduced his monetary reform bill, HR6550, on December 17, 2010, under a rare astrological alignment, two days before the simultaneous Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse conjunct the dark rift in the Milky Way (according to Tropical calculation).With the Sun and Moon conjunct and opposite Pluto which was square Jupiter and Uranus, both widely opposite Saturn, major changes are definitely indicated.

Changing the monetary system is certainly major, for money is the life blood of any economy, and how money is crated and distributed determines how that economy and society will faire in the long run.

Kucinich's bill would have a direct impact on the Federal Reserve, which now creates and distributes US money. This impact is best shown in a biwheel chart showing the Fed's establishment by Congress December 23, 1913.By putting the Fed's natal chart on the inner wheel, and the date for Kucinich's HR6550 on the outer wheel, we can see how the planetary energies of both align for the likely success or failure of the bill.

What leaps out as most potent in this biwheel chart is a cluster of planets in late Sagittarius and early Capricorn.This cluster brackets the Fed's natal Sun-Pluto opposition and indicates that Kucinich's bill will at first be squashed, presumably by powerful people in the financial sector, operating behind the scenes.Don't expect to hear or read much about Kucinich's bill in the mass media, for the cartel that now owns and operates most of the mass media benefits greatly from the present monetary system.

But given the planetary energies involved, this squashing is likely to eventually backfire. The Fed's heavily hit Sun-Pluto opposition indicates the Fed is due for a thorough change of some kind. Not only do the planetary energies indicate this but so does the accumulated debt, especially what is called the national debt.The economy is in such dire straights with public and private debt so overwhelming that some economists expect the US Government to be forced to default because the taxpayer population of overwhelmed with private debt as well.

The "traditional" alternative to a sovereign government default is to create inflation so that cheaper tax dollars can be used to pay national debts. But in today's integrated world economy, that presents the danger of inflation becoming hyperinflation, which would destroy the existing monetary system for most of the world.Kucinich's bill would reconstitute it before a collapse, returning control of money to Congress as set forth in the US Constitution, before Congress privatized it in December 1913 by handing it over to the private bankers of the Federal Reserve.

There are several pervading fears about this. One is that our present monetary system is due to collapse of its own weight if nothing is done.Another is that about 99% of the population does not understand how the syestem works and thus is fearful of any change.A third worry is that Congress has become so corrupted that power over the nation's money would be worse than the present privatized system.Most members of Congress are primarily concerned not with such macro social issues as the money system, but with their own little micro issue of how to get enough money to mount effective reelection campaigns.So Kucinich's bill is presently crunched between public ignorance, Congressional intransigence, and an increasingly likely collapse of the present money system.

Here's a summary of how such a collapse can happen:

"As the privately-owned medium of exchange is withheld from circulation, unemployment rises and wages fall; collaborative ventures and investments cease; businesses wither for lack of customers; and family homes and farms are foreclosed. Private owners of the medium of exchange confiscate the land and tangible assets of society for repayment of debt and poverty spreads throughout the culture. Historically, collapse of the marketplace has been followed by famine, disease, illiteracy, extremely limited opportunity and primitive barter." (Nikki Alexander, Fourwinds10.com)

Kucinich's bill would change the present drift toward "famine, disease, illiteracy, extremely limited opportunity and primitive barter."What follows is a sampling of quotes from the bill setting forth why HR6550 is needed and what it proposes to do.

"To create a full employment economy as a matter of national economic defense; to provide for public investment in capital infrastructure; to provide for reducing the cost of public investment; to retire public debt; to stabilize the Social Security retirement system; to restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money, modernize and provide stability for the monetary system of the United States, retire public debt and reduce the cost of public investment, and for other public purposes."

The need for it is summarized this way:

"The conduct of United States monetary policy by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and specifically the failure of Board members to safeguard the financial system against wholesale fraud and abuse of citizens, demonstrates the risks of maintaining a system wherein the power to create and regulate money has been delegated to private individuals who are unaccountable to the People of the United States in any way, even through their representatives in Congress."

"The country is stymied by competing forces: a desire to put people to work and an aversion to borrowing money to create programs to do so."

"A debt-based monetary system, where money comes into existence primarily through private bank lending, can neither create, nor sustain, a stable economic environment, but has proven to be a source of chronic financial instability and frequent crisis, as evidenced by the near collapse of the financial system in 2008.

"Banks pyramided their value by spending money into existence, greatly inflating the value of bank holdings, inflating the value of their asset bases, enticing unknowing investors to participate in financing schemes like the bundling of subprime mortgages, and ultimately bringing undercapitalized banks and the entire financial system to the edge of ruin, creating circumstances where the taxpayers of the United States were called upon to save the banks from their own imprudent money-issuing practices, misspending and mis-investments. The banks' ability to create money out of nothing ultimately became the taxpayers' liability, and raises a fundamental question about a practice of money creation which threatens the wealth of the American people."

How the bill would bring about the desired results is summarized this way:

"Reclaiming the power of the Federal Government to create money, and to spend or lend money into circulation as needed, eliminates the need to treat money as a Federal liability or to pay interest charges on the Nation's money supply to financial institutions; it also renders unnecessary the undue influence of private financial institutions over public policy."

Undue influence of private financial institutions on Congress is certainly a problem. It's presumed by many that we now have a government "of, for and by the big banks and multinational corporations."But with a new government agency in charge of the creation and distribution of our money, Congress would be much less vulnerable to the present system of lobbying and "bribe-ocracy."

While big financial institutions have greatly benefited from the Fed-run debt-based monetary system, American society has suffered. In effect, these big financial institutions have plundered American society and are now investing overseas, notably in China, which has the kind of state-owned and operated central bank that Ben Franklin and Abe Lincoln advocated, and which Kucinich's bill would restore in the USA.

Ironically, there are meanwhile right-wing conservatives who are lobbying Congress to force China to adopt a privatized central bank based on the Fed prototype.

The original prototype for the Fed was the Bank of England, founded in 1694.The American Revolution was fought by colonists who objected to the "taxation without representation" this monetary system created.Now, one cycle of Pluto-in-Capricorn later, American right-wing conservatives are leading the resistance to Kucinich's bill, which would restore government control of US money as the Constitution prescribed.

What the battle is really all about is distribution of wealth throughout society. A "redistribution of wealth" is what right-wingers object to in Kucinich's proposed legislation, and why they label him a communist.But his bill would merely restore the intentions of the nation's founders, and thus also restore the kind of free enterprise that Americans used in the 1800s to create the wealthiest economy on the planet—until Congress privatized control of money by establishing the Fed and the Internal Revenue Service to collect taxes to repay money loaned by the Fed to the Federal Government.

Although today's economy is a lot more complex, Kucinich's cause is the same today as Ben Franklin's cause was in the 1770s.

If HR6550 is finally adopted, it would not immediately redistribute wealth.Any monetary system takes time to have its effect.What money the US Government (i.e. taxpayers) owes on today's national debt (denominated in Treasury Bonds and Bills) would be repaid over time, but it would be repaid with debt-free money issued by the US Government.Thus we Americans would stop digging ourselves an ever-deeper hole of debt and return to the debt-free system envisioned by the nation's founders. Inflation would be controlled by adjusting the money supply to economic needs, as it was in the nation's early years.

For the past approximately 3,000 years money's primary purpose has been to provide a means of exchange, thus facilitating commerce, which in turn creates prosperity.Since the creation of the Fed, money's secondary purpose—a store of value—has taken over.Yet in whatever form—gold coins or digits on computer screens—money's highest and best use continues to a means of exchange.Those who have stored enough money to be classified as millionaires, billionaires or trillionaires cannot buy the trappings of the super-wealthy lifestyle if the money system collapses.

Since money is now so ubiquitous, a collapse of the money system is hard to imagine.Thus, many among the newly wealthy can be expected to cling to the present system and throw money at Congress members to maintain present system.

On the other hand, the potent alignment of planetary energies due to form from late 2012 through 2015 will manifest events in our earthbound reality that necessitate change.Kucinich's bill rides this mounting wave of needed change.But that doesn't mean it won't be defeated by protectors of the status quo.Planetary patterns indicate periods of crisis, but do not determine how we will respond.

And finally there is the distrust of government that has been created by the corporate-owned media in recent decades. "You can't trust government to do anything right. Government is the problem, not the solution." Or so goes the presumed public opinion created by this propaganda—even as we all depend on a huge number of government agencies to enable our society to function, from Air Traffic Controllers to the Postal Service workers who deliver our mail. Whatever individual or group would be put in charge of our money system could hardly do a worse job than Fed and Wall Street bankers have done.Bankers have a legal responsibility to maximize profits for their shareholders; government employees are responsible to the public.You can hardly jail a banker for wrecking a society when he can claim he was only doing his best to fulfill his legal responsibilities to his shareholders.

For deeper insight into how the present system works, and other proposals to change it, search the internet for "web of debt."

Biography

Robert Gover predicted the stock plunge and financial crisis of 2008 in his book Time and Money: the Economy and the planets. He also predicted the USA would find itself in the worst depression of its history during the 2000-teens.